MADISON - After a round of last-minute negotiations and tough talk, the state Assembly late Wednesday passed a two-year budget that would delay road projects in Milwaukee and inject new money into public and private schools across the state.

At least five conservative senators are blocking a budget vote in the Senate for now, but their Assembly colleagues gave them no concessions — even as Gov. Scott Walker backed at least some changes to win over those holdouts ahead of the Assembly vote.

On a 57-39 vote, the Assembly sent the budget to the Senate. Five Republicans joined 34 Democrats to vote against it.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said he wouldn't be "held hostage" to demands from individual Republican senators, renewing doubts about whether the GOP can resolve internal differences over the budget.

"We are not making wholesale changes to appease one senator with additional budget requests," Vos said at a news conference.

Earlier, Walker tried to keep the budget on track by endorsing at least some of the conservative senators' demands, such as moving up the repeal date of a minimum wage for workers on public infrastructure projects.

"I’m still confident we’ll have a budget by the end of the summer that will … balance the interests of investing more dollars in K-12 education than ever before and lowering property taxes," Walker told reporters in a conference call from a trade mission to South Korea.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) hopes to take up the budget in his house Friday and wants to avoid making any changes that would send it back to the Assembly, said his spokeswoman, Myranda Tanck.

"We don't want to do that," Tanck said.

If the Senate makes changes, the Assembly will not be quick to agree to them, Vos warned.

"We will not be coming back next week. We will not," Vos said.

The budget was supposed to be done by July 1, but Republicans who run the Legislature missed that deadline because of disagreements over transportation and taxes. State funding has been continuing at levels set in the last budget until a new plan is approved.

The Legislature's budget committee reached a fragile deal last week that leaders hope will get the spending plan onto Walker's desk. But some Senate conservatives say they want to see spending reductions and changes to how the Department of Transportation operates.

The budget would spend $75.7 billion and provide for 70,395 state employees — in both cases a modest decrease over what Walker proposed in February.

As a cushion over the next two years, the budget would leave enough extra money in the state's main account to run the government for about four days.

At the start of the next 2019-'21 budget, the bill would leave a nearly $1 billion gap between the level of taxes and the level of spending written into state law. Though substantial, the projected shortfall is smaller than the typical amount over the past two decades, according to the Legislature's nonpartisan budget office.

The budget would raise fees on hybrid and electric cars and borrow $402 million for transportation infrastructure, far less than included in recent budgets. The plan would delay work on Highway 15 in Outagamie County and the north leg of the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee County and put off the reconstruction of I-94 between the Zoo and Marquette interchanges.

Vos said he hoped that in the next budget the public would persuade Walker and Senate conservatives to slow borrowing and raise gas taxes or other new money for roads.

"We have got to find long-term funding solutions that don’t just encourage us to run up the credit card," Vos said.

"If the governor's re-elected — I mean maybe our roads will look something like Bolivia for goodness' sake," he said.

The plan would also bar Milwaukee from using state transit aid or a tax incremental financing district to pay to operate its planned downtown streetcar line.

The budget includes $5 million for both the St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care in Milwaukee and a science and technology center in Green Bay as well as a $4 million earmark for a tiny Wisconsin Rapids airport that has seen a boost in private jets since a Republican donor's golf course opened nearby.

School funding

The budget includes $639 million for K-12 education.

Schools would see:

An additional $200 per student this school year; $204 on top of that the following year; and up to $125 for each ninth-grader to pay for laptops or other electronics.

Increases for districts that spend the least on their students — currently around $9,100 per student in state aid and local property taxes. Under the budget, districts could raise a minimum of $9,300 per student — a figure that would eventually rise to $9,800.

The budget would expand taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious and other private schools to allow roughly 800 more students into those programs.

Families that have incomes of up to 220% of the federal poverty level, or about $45,000 for a family of three, would qualify for the statewide voucher program outside of Milwaukee and Racine. That's up from 185% of the poverty level currently.

The budget would also increase the number of students in the voucher program for children with special needs. The change would drop existing rules limiting the program to students who attend a public school and were denied their request to attend a different public school.

Private schools receive $12,000 a year per student through that program. Under the budget, private schools could claim up to $18,000 for the special needs students who cost the most to serve.

The budget would eliminate the state's $89 million property tax used for forestry programs. Overall, taxes on the median value home worth $160,600 would remain flat this year at $2,851 and then would drop $22 next year, according to the Legislature's nonpartisan budget office.

The budget would also reduce local property taxes on business machinery and use $74 million in state tax money to backfill the cut.

///The Assembly Republicans voting against the budget included some of that house's most conservative members: Scott Allen of Waukesha, Janel Brandtjen of Menomonee Falls, Bob Gannon of West Bend, Adam Jarchow of Balsam Lake and Joe Sanfelippo of New Berlin.

It would eliminate the state’s alternative minimum tax, which is valued at $8.5 million over the next two years. The tax is mostly paid by upper-income taxpayers.

The budget would also drop a 5% tuition cut at the University of Wisconsin System sought by Walker but continue for two more years a freeze on instate tuition.